


Cold Comfort

by AstridContraMundum



Series: Notes from the Yellow House [2]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Basically a bad-tempered cat, Crack Treated Seriously, Morse is passive aggressive, Multi, One-sided pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:06:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29360760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: Morse had gotten quite used to long, quiet evenings with Jim, sitting side by side on the threadbare couch, watching the telly.But tonight, it seems, Jim has other plans.Leaving Morse to determine that revenge is a dish best served cold.
Relationships: Endeavour Morse/Jim Strange, Endeavour Morse/Joan Thursday, Jim Strange/Joan Thursday
Series: Notes from the Yellow House [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2152917
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14





	Cold Comfort

Morse sat wedged deep into the corner of the threadbare sofa, listening to the clatter of plates and the clink of silverware resounding from the galley kitchen as Jim puttered about, washing up the evening’s dishes.

The worn fabric of Jim’s old couch—smelling faintly of curry mingled with the spice of his cologne—felt rough against the thin cotton of Morse’s shirt, leaving a slight but delicious burn where he leaned up against the back and the arm of it— and it was with an edge of impatience that he took up one of the horrid russet throw pillows and nestled it into his lap, curling himself against it as he waited for Jim to join him for the match.

Or for the Almanac.

Or for that advertisement for Gidbury’s lime desserts, played on an endless loop.

It hardly mattered to Morse, what was on the screen.

Morse had gotten quite used to it, sharing digs with his colleague Jim Strange, more quickly than he ever would have imagined.

Every morning when he woke, burrowed in his blankets like an animal warm in its den, it was to the rich and savory scent of a solid English breakfast wafting through the air with a heaviness and a headiness that went straight to his head … or rather to some place low in his gut.

He’d stumble into the kitchen in only his vest and pajama bottoms, while Jim—his hair combed back, already dressed and dapper for the day—moved about the kitchen with the ease and grace of a ballerina, setting dishes before him with his broad and able hands—dishes which Morse accepted with no thanks other than a grumble of acknowledgement before he picked up his fork and began to tuck in.

But that was alright; Jim didn’t mind.

Didn’t even notice, really.

Already, he would be in the process of turning away, back to refilling his cup of coffee or to scouring the pan in which he had fried the eggs, sunny-side up—whistling to himself with a genuine good cheer that Morse thought ought to be illegal at such an ungodly hour.

In the evenings, it was just the same—Jim was always trying some new recipe, scowling into his cookbooks the way a first year might ponder over some particularly tricky passage of Lucretius, before adding a bit of this or a bit of that to the pot. Always with that same light trace of a smile on his face, even when he hit a snag, even in the throes of difficulty.

_Piece of cake, this detecting lark. Don’t know what the fuss is about_ , Jim had once said to him, long ago. 

Morse had scowled and shook his head in utter despair of him.

But perhaps Jim had simply meant to be honest.

Perhaps it _did_ all come easily to him.

Just like everything else did, evidently.

How did he do it?

Morse would dearly love to know.

The best part of the day, however— even better than the hot and filling meals—were the long stretches of their evenings, when they sat side by side on the couch, watching the telly.

At first, Morse had avoided it, the empty and idiotic murmur of the situation comedies, the droning of the announcer moderating the never-ending and indecipherable football matches.

But then, one evening as he was finishing his crossword, Jim came to sit down beside him, and at once, Morse felt it—the way Jim seemed to radiate with a white-hot heat, a warmth as bright and unexpected as walking past a sun-filled window in February.

Morse had placed his pencil and folded newspaper down onto the coffee table, and slowly, he found himself sinking into it, inch by painstaking inch. Jim’s greater girth caused the cushions of the dilapidated couch to tilt ever so slightly, pulling Morse along with them, right into Jim’s orbit, so that he couldn’t help it, really. Couldn’t help that slow slide towards that radiant heat, couldn’t help but to lean into it in just the same way a light-starved plant slowly unwinds itself, turning its leaves towards the sun.

Eventually, he would find himself so off-kilter that his leg was brushing up just alongside of Jim’s. And, after that, there was little, if anything, required of him. He was free simply to sit there, for as long as he liked, soaking up the warmth—to sit there for hours, reveling in that human touch.

It was a sweet sort of torture to have so little and yet feel so much, but yet, at the same time, there was something deeply satisfying about it, too. The tingle he felt there in the press of their thighs filled him with a sense of contentment much more sustaining than even all of those endless tumbles with Claudine.

In retrospect, there were times during their affair when he had felt like little more than a trained poodle, jumping through hoops, begging for scraps at her table.

_Again._

Whereas, during his evenings with Jim, he was free to take and to take and to take. The food and the warmth and the comfort. And Jim asked nothing in return, didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

He simply went on as he always went on, as he always _would_ go on, as reliable as the sun in its sphere.

It wasn’t the Yellow House. But it wasn’t half bad, either.

Off in the kitchen, Jim turned off the tap of the sink, and Morse hugged the pillow closer, his stomach curling in anticipation.

In a moment, Jim was walking into the living area, but then he turned away, off down the hall, without even so much as a look in Morse’s direction, his footsteps on the creaking floors growing fainter and ever fainter—until as last they were drowned out completely by the rush of water in the shower resounding through the thin, cheap walls.

Morse scowled, pulling the pillow in still closer, cradling it against his belly, as he mulled over this new development.

Where was Jim going?

For a long while, Morse did nothing; he simply sat there, listening to the water rushing with all the fury of a waterfall. 

He was tempted to spring up just then, to burst right in on him, to ask him what plans he might have for the evening.

But that, of course, would be ridiculous.

It wasn’t any of his business, if Jim was going out.

He wasn’t accountable to him.

So instead, once he heard the water shut off, he continued to sit, listening to the sound of Jim’s horrible sunburst clock on the wall, counting out what seemed a reasonable amount of time before he tossed the pillow away, untangled himself from the couch, and then stalked off down the hall.

As he passed the door to Jim’s room, he saw that Jim was there, standing in a vest and a pair of dark trousers, looking into a small oval mirror hung over his dresser, smacking on a generous helping of aftershave.

There was no reason for Morse to have strayed so far down the hall, no reason for him to go into Jim’s room—in fact, he had never so much as stepped foot past the threshold before.

But tonight, he found himself wandering in, as if by chance, as if he did so every day, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Jim cast him a curious glance as he pulled a crisp white shirt from off a chair by the window, but if he thought it was odd that Morse should stray into his private space, he didn’t say.

“Off somewhere?” Morse asked. 

Jim pulled the shirt on, threading first one arm through the sleeve and then the other, and then began slowly to button it up, with those same deft hands that so ably flipped eggs or poured out a cup of tea without ever spilling so much as a drop on the yellow and white tablecloth.

“Yeah. I have a date, actually,” he said.

“Oh?” Morse asked.

Jim kept buttoning up his shirt, watching his fingers as they worked, while Morse kept his eyes carefully trained on him 

Morse knew well how to maintain eye contact with a suspect, knew all too well how his steady blue gaze made people feel uneasy, until—almost despite themselves— they found themselves squirming under the intensity of it, until they found themselves yielding more … the information he was searching for….

“Yeah,” Jim said. “Girl I ran into on a case.”

Morse snorted, a new tightness in his chest slowly unwinding.

Was that all?

“I wouldn’t advise that,” he said. “That way disaster lies.”

“No,” Jim said, as he took a tie that had been draped over the top of the chair with a surprising flourish. Then, he turned to the mirror and began carefully working the knot of it, keeping his eyes trained on his reflection.

“Not a suspect,” he said. “A girl working over at the Advice Centre.”

Morse felt the twist of tension return, then, along with a sudden surge of coldness, as if what little warmth he held within his thin frame was draining right out of him, pooling onto Jim’s hardwood floor …

Morse continued to watch him, with the same intent gaze, until Jim confirmed it.

“Actually,” he said. “It’s Joannie.”

“Oh,” Morse said.

For a few moments, an unpleasant awkwardness hung in the air between them, as heavy and as gluey as the grease saturating one of those paper cones of chips Jim was so eternally fond of. 

“I hope there’s no hard feelings, matey,” Jim said, turning to him at last, his words coming out all in a rush. “I mean, you weren’t…?”

He let the question fall away, then, and how could Morse blame him?

What way, what possible way was there, to complete that sentence?

As much as Morse had once nursed a hope, what had he and Joan been to one another—ever been to one another?—other than one misstep, one missed glance, one misunderstanding, one after the other and one after the other and…

“No,” Morse said.

The syllable sounded soft and low, almost like a sigh, and it was true, really.

So why should it sound so false, even to his own ears?

Morse should have left, right there and then—left it at that, and left Jim to his evening. But instead, he wandered further into the room, meandering over to the dresser.

More for something to do with his hands than anything else, he picked up an amber bottle of cologne from off of the tray there, closing his eyes as he wafted the bottle back and forth under his nose.

“You might want to try some more of this,” Morse suggested.

Jim eyed him warily. 

“I don’t think so, matey. You _can_ have too much of a good thing.”

“Hmmmmm,” Morse hummed, noncommittally.

Jim went over to his wardrobe, then, and pulled out a dark blue jacket. It looked nice, really. Expensive. Morse hadn’t even known that Jim owned such a thing.

He scowled at the sight of it.

“What is it?” Jim asked.

“Oh. You know. I just wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“If that jacket’s not a bit much. Might look as if you’re trying too hard.”

“Really?”

“Hmmmm.”

Morse’s eyes trailed around the room, then, falling at last on a patterned jumper that Jim’s mother had sent to him at his birthday, which lay folded on a trunk at the end of his bed.

It was Morse’s favorite, that heavy knit-cable. Thick and yielding, it seemed to contain Jim’s warmth and redouble it, sending it fourth as toasty as a crackling fire, so that all of the tension in Morse’s shoulders eased, leaving all of his knots and his angles soft and pliant …

Joan, on the other hand, was always one to follow the latest fashions, the latest trends. She wouldn’t appreciate it in the least, she’d find it terribly old-fashioned, like something her father might wear at Christmas Eve dinner.

“I thought, maybe you’d rather go with _that,_ ” Morse said, nodding to where the jumper lay.

Strange followed his gaze and then frowned, eyeing him critically, as if he hadn’t really ever saw him before.

Morse swallowed.

It was surprising, wasn’t it?

Somewhere along the line, it seemed Jim _had_ learned to become a good detective.

“You’re sure? You don’t mind?” Jim asked, his eyes steady on him. “I thought. Well. Now that you’ve got Claudine, you wouldn’t be ….”

Morse looked away, then, sinking further at the sound of that name, a deeper chill gathering into his bones.

Because he didn’t have Claudine.

He had never had Claudine.

He had been nothing to her, not for even one moment.

_Au revoir, Cheri._

And he didn’t have Joan, either.

Although he might have done.

Miss Thursday had come to sit beside him at the pub, her deep blue eyes full of concern, watching his every move, and it was the perfect opportunity, the perfect time to have said it.

_It’s not Claudine, I miss._

_It’s you._

_It’s always been you._

But instead, he had simply shrugged and taken a draught of his beer.

_“Oh, you know me. Easy come, easy go.”_

Morse winced at the very memory of it.

Because Miss Thursday _did_ know him.

Well enough to know the enormity of such a bold-faced lie.

Nothing was ever easy with him, was it?

Not like it was with Jim…

How did he do it?

Morse would dearly love to know. 

“If you’re still hung up on her, matey. I mean …. ” Jim began, uncertainly.

“Of course not.”

And Morse’s voice was steadier, this time, because …. perhaps it was true.

Because perhaps … just perhaps….

Perhaps it wasn’t …

Perhaps it wasn’t _Jim_ that he was jealous of…..

****

After Jim left, Morse changed into his vest and pajama bottoms and staggered back out into the living room, dragging a mismatched array of blankets from his bed with him, collapsing back into the depths of the sofa.

For a while, he simply sat there in silence, his body lodged in the corner of the couch, while his head was miles away, off on that rooftop where he had once stood, just a few weeks ago.

Off to where, no doubt, Jim and Joan were standing right now.

_“Come closer,”_ Joan would say.

And of course, Jim, having no fear of heights—hadn’t the _imagination,_ really, for any such abstractions—would comply, falling in beside her.

_“It’s a beautiful view, Miss Thursday.”_

He’d lean in, then, so close that her dark hair might brush against his freshly-shaven jaw, so close that he might breathe in the scent of her floral shampoo, as he murmured softly to her.

“ _Humid the air … leafless, yet soft as spring,_

_the tender purple spray on copse and briers…_

_And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,_

_She needs not June for beauty’s heightening.”_

No.

Jim wouldn’t say that.

Of course, he wouldn’t be capable of all of that. 

_“Sure is a nice place you got here, Joannie.”_

Morse huffed a mirthless laugh.

Yes.

That was it.

He’d step closer, right to the edge of the rooftop, not a fear or a doubt once crossing his mind. 

And Joan would cast her face over her shoulder, with her bold pansy-blue eyes, her impish smile… and how could she help but to feel it, the warmth and solidity and comfort?

He’d smile steadily, an uncomplicated thing.

How could she help but to step nearer?

Jim would look at her, hold her gaze, until she fell right into that easy smile, genuine and forthright and true … So unlike his own stupidity, his dithering about, hemming and hawing as he looked down at the ground, scrubbing up the hair at his nape like a schoolboy called in before the headmaster.

_“This is as close as I get.”_

His stomach bubbled hot with it, then, with a fresh and sickening surge of self-loathing.

He shoved the blankets aside and sprung up from the sofa, stalking across the room to the small kitchen filled with Jim’s cooking utensils and yellow nesting chickens and dishtowels embroidered with smiling strawberries, and all of the things that Morse never would have bothered with in millions of years, in absolute eons, but which made the place feel like home, all the same.

He went to the cupboard for the bottle of Scotch, only to find the damned thing was empty.

And who would put an empty bottle back in the cupboard rather than in the bin?

Jim never would have done such a thing.

It could only have been that idiot, Fancy. He must have finished off the last of it the last time he had been ‘round, honing in on Morse’s evening in search of a free meal, and hadn’t wanted to draw his attention to the fact that he had drained the last damned drop.

Morse threw the bottle into the bin and slammed the cupboard door shut, making a mental note to give Fancy hell in the morning on some pretext or another.

Shouldn’t be hard, really.

He opened the doors of next cupboard, then, looking for his sole remaining bottle of Radford’s, but it was nowhere to be seen.

It was too much to be borne.

Had someone put it in the fridge again?

He tore open the refrigerator door, but it wasn’t there, either.

Oh, hell.

Could it be possible?

Could it be possible that there was not one drop of alcohol in the place?

For one wild moment, Morse wished that Jim was there to see him, in all of his desperation and despair.

_Look._

_Just look at what I’ve been reduced to._

Morse opened the door of the freezer, then, with more force than was strictly necessary. He rummaged about and then pulled out a quart of vanilla ice cream—Jim’s, of course—cradling it in one arm as he turned around and ripped open the silverware drawer with the other. He retrieved a single spoon and slammed the drawer shut, returning with his bounty to his lair of blankets on the sofa, not bothering with a bowl, intent on devouring the whole bloody thing.

Once he had burrowed back into his untidy nest and tore open the cardboard lid of the carton, however, it was as if all of his strength, all of that surge of adrenaline, had utterly drained out of him.

He felt like an abandoned thing, bereft.

_This is as close as I get._

He took one bite of the ice cream, but it did nothing to comfort. Just the opposite, in fact. It seemed only to lodge in his throat, a cold, painful lump that he could barely bring himself to swallow. It made him feel sick, really, the way the heavy cream slid down into his roiling gut, the way the coldness ran through his very veins, settling in his heavy and weary heart.

He tossed the cardboard quart and the spoon away, off onto the coffee table, and then he slouched back onto the couch, nestling into his corner.

For a long time, he sat, listening to the tick of that sunburst clock that seemed—in that moment—to be ticking off not only this evening, but all of the long and empty evenings ahead of him, just as sure as that engraved watch he had found in Ronald Beavis’ flat.

Soon he was tilting over, and then slumping down and down, until he was lying across the whole of the sofa, his face buried in the pillow at the opposite end.

But it, too, soft and formless, brought only cold comfort—it was no substitute for another’s presence, nothing at all like the firm weight of muscle and bone of Jim’s thigh, nestled warmly against his own.

But Morse kept lying there all the same, watching through heavy-lidded eyes as the ice cream began to melt, as it began seeping through the cardboard until it pooled out onto the coffee table into a puddle of viscous white liquid that grew and morphed in much the same way that a cloud changes shape across the sky.

He lay there and watched until a thick vanilla rivulet began to form, reaching out with a cold finger towards the end of the table.

Lay there and watched as it began to run with a steady drip onto Jim’s oval rug.

Morse could only imagine what a telling-off Jim would give him when he came in and saw the mess he had made. He had talked to him time and time again about such things.

He could hear him already.

_“Fridge is just fifteen steps away, matey.”_

But still, Morse did not get up, did not take those fifteen steps. Instead, he simply lay there and watched as the pool grew larger, as the rivulet continued to drip steadily onto the carpet with a satisfying sound, like the slow plop of water from a spout after a good, hard rain.

_Plop._

_Plop._

_Plop._

And, as he watched, he burrowed his face further down into the pillow, his mouth curving into a slow trace of a smile.

Jim would be annoyed no end when he came through that door and found what he had done, Jim would be furious.

But it would all be worth it.

Just for those handful of moments, just for the feel of it—of Jim’s broad hand on his bare and freckled shoulder, as he shook him violently awake.


End file.
